A weak heart produces a poor appetite

July 12, 2012

Heart-brain-stomach link of major importance for diabetes and heart failure discovered: as a recent study by the MedUni Vienna has demonstrated, the hormone BNP, generated by the heart, also has an appetite-inhibiting effect. This discovery may open up new therapeutic opportunities for people with chronic heart failure or diabetes.

The heart not only responds to hormones, but it also produces some of these messenger substances itself. In patients with heart failure (weak hearts), increased levels of the hormone BNP (B-type natriuretic peptide) are released. When produced in greater quantities, this hormone supports the hearts action: not only do the kidneys excrete more sodium and fluid, but the vessels also dilate. The clear relationship between chronic heart failure and loss of appetite and the dramatic loss of weight was already known about, and determining the reason behind it would represent an important new discovery.

Heart hormone BNP has an appetite-suppressing effect

A team at the MedUni Vienna led by Martin Clodi from the Clinical Department of Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases has now been able to answer this question. The hormone BNP is the culprit, since it has a direct appetite-suppressing effect. The mechanism behind it is also described by the study, which has just been published in the internationally leading magazine Diabetes.

Until now, all that was known was that there was a bi-directional connection between the brain and the gastrointestinal tract. This brain-stomach link is also one of the key triggers for the chronic conditions of irritable bowel syndrome and dyspepsia. The heart-brain-stomach link that has now been discovered apparently appears to exchange vital information with the brain and regulate key physical functions and, in patients with heart failure, clearly makes it easier for the heart to work effectively by reducing the patient's weight. This will open up interesting perspectives for new treatment concepts in chronic heart failure and diabetes," says Clodi.

Related Stories

Heart failure is associated with a 30 percent increase in major fractures and also identifies a high-risk population that may benefit from increased screening and treatment for osteoporosis, according to a recent study accepted ...

The impaired substrate metabolism of diabetes patients is often expressed in an increase in fatty deposits in the cells of the heart muscle. Until now, the exact cause of this was unknown. Now, Austrian researchers at the ...

Recommended for you

More and more Americans on-the-go are skipping the "most important meal of the day," not eating until lunch. This tendency to miss breakfast has already been linked to the growing epidemic of obesity and cardiovascular problems ...

New research from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health describes a molecular mechanism that helps explain how obesity-related inflammation can lead to type 2 diabetes. The findings describe a surprising connection between ...

New research from Uppsala University shows promising progress in the use of anti-inflammatory cytokine for treatment of type 1 diabetes. The study, published in the open access journal Scientific Reports, reveals that administration ...

For nearly a century, insulin has been a life-saving diabetes treatment. Now scientists are testing a tantalizing question: What if pills containing the same medicine patients inject every day could also prevent the disease?

Bacteria and viruses have an obvious role in causing infectious diseases, but microbes have also been identified as the surprising cause of other illnesses, including cervical cancer (Human papilloma virus) and stomach ulcers ...

Sometimes, listening in on a conversation can tell you a lot. For Mark Huising, an assistant professor in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior at the UC Davis College of Biological Sciences, that crosstalk ...

0 comments

Please sign in to add a comment.
Registration is free, and takes less than a minute.
Read more

Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.